All posts in Ask Me

Still keep asking away here.

Jani asks…

Do you use software like SpeedPPC or Xtreme conversions or do you have your own exclusive systems?

 
Nope I don’t use any of those. In-house systems are the way to go. Find a good programmer that will stick by your side and have them build whatever you want.

nickycakes asks…

why do you always brag about your “earnings” but refuse to ever post how much of it is actually profit.

 
When have I ever refused? When I posted up that $200k Azoogle screenshot I later then posted how much adspend I had in Adwords, I think it was $119k. Do some research before you make yourself look like an ass trying to call me out.

Affiliate Experiment asks…

Do you ever use the content network? If so, any tips on how to get better CTR and/or conversions?

 
Yes I use it in some of my campaigns, the majority is search traffic though. CTR and conversions are both naturally a lot lower on the content network, so just working trying to improve what you already have.

Norman asks…

How many keywords do you typically have in a campaign? How many keywords are in your largest campaign?

 
It really varies per each campaign. My largest campaign has around 100,000 keywords but only makes about $200 per day. Some have less than 100 keywords and make $3,000+ per day. Allll depends on the niche baby.

Tom Printy asks…

I just put a lot of aff links using openads(openx) on a site I help maintain. The site is at http://www.sourcelight.com/discover/new_releases.php. What should be our next steps and what do you think of our implementation? Any other pointers?

 
Researching your site and coming up with a plan would take much more time than any of the other questions would. I’d focus on really building traffic to it before you worry too much about monetizing it. Get the traffic there and then test different offers/ways of advertising.

Michael asks…

Almost all the affiliate sites you recommend to join ask for my website, but I don’t have a website yet, what am I supposed to do?

 
Where it says to put your website, just put “Affiliate Landing Pages”. That’s what I do at least.

Ruck asks…

At your age and ability to obviously network with some damn smart people, what other business models outside of pay per click have you thought about pursuing or are pursuing? Obviously specifics will be omitted but in what areas have you thought about going into or scaling to secure other business ventures?

 
I’ve actually been taking a look at the advertisers side of things and have been looking into creating some of my own offers. There’s definitely money to be made there and you let everyone else make it for you. I also have been developing an idea in the affiliate industry that will be launched soon and is pretty cool. Starting that up should be a decent amount of work in itself, so I’m pretty loaded for now.

Joost asks…

How do you deal with the unknown factor of what percentage of your leads of sales is going to be rejected? I find it very frustrating to wait for a month to see the approval percentage and by this the actual eCPC.

 
To be honest the campaigns I’m running now don’t really have that factor. I get paid weekly on everything and nobody has ever charged back leads that I’ve sent. If an affiliate network says they’re not going to pay you and you’re sending normal whitehat PPC traffic, tell them you’re switching all your traffic to another network. At most they should just say they have to cut your payout a little because of quality.

Joe asks…

Do you think affiliate marketing is a long term, sustainable business model?

 
Yes I do. Affiliate marketing is doing nothing but grow, it’s just about finding ways to stay on top and not be pushed away because of competition. If you’re smart enough, there’s enough money in aff marketing to save up enough bank and retire in 5 years from it.

ScooperMan asks…

Have you ever used offline marketing tactics to market online offers? Such as, classified ads, commercials, magazine ads, etc.
Have you ever bought pop up or pop under traffic?

1) Nope, not worth the time. Marketing online is faster, and has a WAY wider reach. I’d do that other stuff (commercials, magazines) if I wanted to brand a product or unique site idea that I created.

2) Yeah I have. Never really spent enough time with it to make good money though.

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Alright if you have questions just go to this post and leave them in a comment. I’m just going to go straight down the list starting from the top and churn through 10 questions a round. Enjoy fellas.

Jason asks…

How many campaigns do you have running at any given time, what percentage of them produce a ROI, and what percentage of what you make from those that produce ROI do you lose on those that don’t?

I usually only have 2-3 big campaigns running, I like to put all my eggs in a few baskets and dominate the niche rather than make $20/day on 100 different campaigns. They all produce a positive ROI or I wouldn’t be running them, don’t really understand what you’re trying to say.

Brady asks…

How does the ppc landscape change in terms of video in the next 18 months?

Also Paul PM’d you no response what gives?

 
Not sure really, I haven’t tested with video so not sure how it’s going to work out. Until a majority of pages start using them which will prove that it’s more profitable, I’ll stick with how I’m doing things now.

As far as not responding, where did you PM? I get so many IMs/PMs/emails/etc it’s impossible to keep track.

Jhon asks…

Which industry is producing most of your money in the past months for affiliate marketing?

 
Uhm…would you like my keywords and landing pages with that as well? Jk jk seriously though, I try to be as secretive as possible with things I run. I know a lot of people think they know what my gravy is…but…heh.

Dan asks…

Next car purchase?
Going back to college?
Other sources of income aside from AM?

1) Not sure when that’ll be. I was going to get a new one, but when I bought a house I decided to hold off on the car for a while.

2) Nope, not for a few years at least. I’d like to get a degree in nutritional science because it really interests me and always has, but too many biology and chemistry classes that have too much homework and study time, hah.

3) My blog. That’s about it for now, but I am working on developing some other resources that will drive income, one that I’ll be publicly releasing on this blog with in a month :).

Joe asks…

How much more difficult do you think PPC based affiliate marketing has gotten since you got started a year ago?

 
Umm, it’s a tough question to say. Reason being that I wasn’t nearly as heavily involved in PPC back then as I am now. A year ago I was doing random keywords for ringtones in Yahoo and that was it. I made bank on that for a good 6 months before I started getting into other things. But in the past 6 months or so, yeah I’d say it’s definitely getting a little more intense. It’s just naturally how competition works though, just need to find ways to stay on top.

airbball23 asks…

you still do facebook ppc? any tips/suggestions on this?

 
Nopee. About a month ago I made a campaign, spent like $600 on it and made $150 and have been too busy/lazy to try and get anything else going.

Frank asks…

How do you hide the affiliate links?
lke http://www.uveraffiliate.com/recommend/azoogle.php

Do you have skype?

 
I use a simple PHP redirect. The file name would be file.php, and then the code just looks like this (just replace the { } tags with proper < and > tags):

{?php

?}

I think I have a Skype, but I never use it so I don’t know the name.

Toki asks…

Actually my question would be, what is your process for doing keyword research for creating ppc campains? what tools do you use…etc.

 
This article should pretty much answer your question in solid detail.

Yebot asks…

What software is crucial to success in your business? Particular in PPC …

Word.

In-house tracking + Adwords tracking via pixel. If you want a free tracking tool I suggest you look at Tracking202.

Ruzvelt asks…

How do you create initial cash for yourself? I mean, I would refer to your low budget guide, but $50-100 is all I could spare a month.

 
I actually created my first real PPC funding through creating a general web directory. I got it up to PR5 with a crapload of backlinks, and some guy bought it for $3,000. That was enough to really get the ball started for me. I recommend checking out some Yahoo coupons. Here’s a link for $25 free. Make a few accounts and there’s some initial money to get things going.

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Ask me questions about anything: affiliate marketing, blogging, making money online, my life…anything.

Q&A posts are the easiest for a blogger to write (because your topics are predetermined), and sometimes the best for readers (because real common questions get answered. I’ll start by answering a bunch with text, and then if there’s too many questions to type, I’ll do some with video also.

Fire away!

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A while back I made a post asking readers to ask me questions that I would then answer in a series of video posts. I haven’t gotten a decent webcam yet and want to answer questions, so I’m just going to get to some of them here.

If you have a question, leave it as a comment on this post and I’ll get to it.

p38 asks…

How long do you usually work on a campaign before it goes live?

It depends on the campaign (like with everything), but if I had to give an average…I’d say I work on it for about 3-5 days. I’ll research similar pages out there advertising what I’m going for, build a quick landing page myself that resembles the more popular ones, build some keyword lists, and then upload. Once I test out my traffic and see that it’s actually converting and making me sales, I’ll pause everything, break my stats down, and recreate everything. Then after I relaunch, I do the major tweaking and split-testing as I go.
 

HustleStrategy asks…

Do you enjoy what you do (to the extent that you would do it for a normal salary) or do you enjoy the money? Are you going back to school? Why/why not?

I love what I do…you simply can’t beat it. I’d do it for a normal salary. It’s risky, exciting, rewarding, and you’re the boss. You just cannot beat it. I’m probably not going back to school – not immediately at least. I’ve put a little thought into taking a couple night/online courses, not sure what major. I’d probably do something that interests me, not something that would possibly “help my job”…physics maybe.
 

LearnPHP asks…

Is it true that not all niche sites do well?

Of course it’s true. I’ve had plenty of niches where everything is targeted: the site, the traffic, the adcopy, etc. But they simply didn’t convert to sales. No matter how much you try to narrow it down to those in just “buying” mode, many still want to just look. That’s where the uber affiliates and struggling affiliates differ. A struggling affiliate believes that everything can work, and work for months on end trying to get this one campaign to work. An uber affiliate puts some time, money, and testing into a campaign. If it doesn’t work, they move on to something else.
 

Jonathan Volk asks…

Do you often promote ZIP offers?

Actually, I’ve never put time into trying ZIP/email submit offers. The only thing I’ve ever run them through is Facebook. I’ve talked to some people who seem to have had a little success with them, so I’m sure it’s possible. The key here would be getting cheap traffic, and then selling them on the landing page. Which you could sell them by saying “All you have to do is submit your ZIP code and we’ll send you your ipod” or something like that, but then traffic quality with the networks becomes an issue because none of the traffic converts on the merchant end. I’m sure you could get some pretty shady things going with zips/emails.
 

p38 asks again…

Do you try to stay away from offers that require credit cards?

No sir. A good affiliate can get the buyer to pull out his credit card. Take the challenge! Make the visitor trust you, and they will pull out their card.

George Kim asks…

Last few articles you have written are e-book material. Have you ever thought about creating an ebook? Free Affiliate guide?

If I made an eBook, I’d have to sell it for $7. Yeah right. I don’t really care about making a book, maybe I’ll make a smaller one just to put on my sidebar and give away for free like everybody else does, but if I want to talk about something I’ll usually do it here. I do have a couple big projects coming up that should be preeeetty nice though. You guys will be finding out first from this blog, but be pumped.
 

Rajuthan asks…

What do you do with your profits?

Bank it baby. For real though, most of it goes into other projects, or just in the bank. I don’t really spend that much money on myself, my vacations come from Amex points and my toys come from affiliate networks and their reward programs. I’m hopefully buying a house in a couple months time so I’m just kind of putting away for that, and everything I’ll have to fill it with.

Alright, hopefully I answered your questions well enough. Once again just post any others you have here and I’ll hit them up. Q&A sessions are easy writing for me, and quality content for you, so let’s keep them coming.

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